This first attempt show by Polish-born artist Maciei Toporowicz had the title "Lure" which is also the name of a balminess he has commissioned from a Paris parfumeur.

This first attempt show by Polish-born artist Maciei Toporowicz had the title "Lure" which is also the name of a balminess he has commissioned from a Paris parfumeur. An edition of 200 bottle was made; all were forward sale at the gallery along with 50-odd photographs and a video. The display should be regarded as Conceptual art. In his redolence Toporowicz tried to capture the fragrance of incense in the hair of the Thai women sex-workers he has photographed for the powerful "Lure" and "Mad encage Rai" series, a fragrance that they acquire (he says) when they attend Buddhist services before going to work. The photographs all measure 16 through 20 inches and are copper-tinted, with, moreover, a silkscreened logo printed in succession each--the name "Lure" over the the biohazard emblem Most of the women are beautiful, with no evident psychological damage appearing in their expressions, in such a manner perhaps Buddhism protects them. What it doesn't interrupt is HIV infection and another series of wrenching photographs depicts infants living in a dwelling for HIV-positive children, many of whose mothers must be sex workers. Toporowicz has imposed a "Baby Gap" logo onward these pictures, a tendentious detail that destroys sentimentality but also introduces an off-key satiric note. And wouldn't a certain quantity of multinational consortium be a fairer target?

Tendentiousness replaces artfulness altogether in the exhibition's third photo series, which superimposes the Calvin Klein "Obsession" brand name upon recycled pictures from the Nazi era--overmuscled statues on Arno Breker, the German Pavilion from the 1937 Paris Exposition, the zeppelin field at Nuremberg. The point has to do with Klein's use of male nudity in his ads, which is suppos to duplicate a Fascist "obsession" with Aryan virility. Toporowicz steady includes shots of the Auschwitz oven and vitrines filled with eyeglasses and discarded suitcases. Callous exploitation? Disproportionate blame? I think for a like reason In any case, the photographs have no special interest as photographs, it's solitary their conceptual frame that matters. A wrongheaded general [i]or[/i] abstract notion at that, otherwise Praxiteles, Michelangelo and a legion of NeoClassical artists concerned with the in a state of nature male figure must also think as proto-Nazis. Meanwhile, the prostitution photographs and invented logo have more actual satisfy because Toporowicz has included among them a bond of self-portraits taken in the same Bangkok inns where his women subjects work. "Lure" redolence sells for two hundred bucks

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